


Departures from Keuruu

by onnenlintu



Series: The Kasvatus Series [5]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: F/F, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-28 05:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14441991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onnenlintu/pseuds/onnenlintu
Summary: Penultimate work of The Kasvatus Series. Increasingly about sheep.





	1. Chapter 1

Dear Reynir,  
  
Apologies for not keeping up our correspondence lately. Things were absolute chaos for some time in my own house, and now are even more so in the rest of Keuruu. I assume you've heard the news about the contact, and can imagine how little I want to hear or talk any more about said news.  
  
Instead, have some different (although I must admit, related...) news: I am now seriously considering leaving Keuruu. As you remember, the final goal of my sheep project has been more or less reached. I never expected to manage this before I was thirty, but here we are. Now I have a bit of a conundrum, in that my friends here really are like family to me, but I  am seriously tempted by the idea of starting to work with sheep full-time. I don't think exactly what I have in mind will be really possible in Keuruu, which is a real shame.  
  
I think it's very likely to be possible in general though, if the mental space to organise it becomes available. I believe I briefly mentioned that I started to become involved with somebody, S, near the end of last summer. It's early days yet, but the fact she is also very invested in the sheep and has some desire to leave Keuruu eventually does feel like perhaps it points at something. Neither of us are the type to count our chickens before they hatch, but - I apologise if this is oversharing - we have had a lot of conversations about the logistics of starting a sheep farm.  
  
The idea of leaving others behind would probably still be enough to stop me, it's strange to want to leave given all I have here, but I think you understand - when it's a choice between how mad things have been around here and possibly leaving to go full-time with the sheep, you would agree with me that the latter is tempting, wouldn't you? Even if it never happens, you see why I would be thinking about it a lot.  
  
Now I put all that down, I wish I'd written earlier. It would have been nice to just chat about the sheep and S. a bit when the town was being torn up by researchers and journalists, but I suppose the things that will be helpful to do aren't always very obvious. I do hope things are a bit more peaceful on your end. I got your letter saying you'd been having worrying dreams about things happening in my life; I guess those turned out to be some of your prophetic ones. It's a pity there's not much I could have done.  
  
Best wishes,  
  
Laura  
  
*  
  
Dear Laura,  
  
It's so good to finally hear from you, and that's really exciting news! How will you go about finding a farm to work on? I don't know how it works there but I would guess it's a bit difficult to just start one on your own. Usually people here get them from their families, and it sounds like you aren't already waiting on a family farm, so I am kind of interested to know what is going to happen. I bet whatever it is, you'll make it work. Sheep are great. I totally understand! In fact, at the moment, I'm making my mother some more mittens with her favourite two ewes on them, one for each hand. It's not that long a chart to follow but I have to admit I'm still really annoyed! I hate following ones that are longer than a few rows, even if I made it myself I have to look up all the time and it ruins how calm it is. I guess that's an okay problem to have, but still, I hope she appreciates how many times I re-did part of them just to be really sure they looked exactly like Angelica and Moonwort. They're some of my favourites too so I want to be picky about it. I can't remember what my point was, but it was probably just that I really love sheep and I'm glad I get to be around them all the time.  
  
You know, I bet you are onto something, planning so much stuff with your new girlfriend. You're really smart and there must be some reason you feel like it's a good idea to get her involved. I've never had a big project like that with someone I'm seeing, but I remember when Bjarni got married, and he said that building an extension on their house made them get along worse at first, but then much better, so maybe doing a big thing together helps. Not that I think you and her need help, but if you're worried, maybe that's reassuring. (I think I told you about my cousin Bjarni, with the foot and now the garlic, but this Bjarni is my brother, a little loud but much less garlicky. There is a third Bjarni, another cousin, but I can't remember how many times removed he is. Sorry we have so many men named Bjarni. Are there names like that in Finland, where everyone knows at least four people with it?)  
  
It's funny you should mention the dreams I was having about you, because there have been more. I have to ask, is anyone you know going to have a baby? If you don't already know, maybe you should ask any of your friends who look like they might. I guess you have to be careful asking because if you ask the wrong person, people always think it's really rude, but maybe you already know who it might be. I might be wrong anyway, because it does all seem very mixed up with other people I dream about as well, even though I should be able to keep these things apart better now I've had some training. Still, I thought I should say, because if I had a vision about something and it turned out to be important I wouldn't want to not have said, you know?  
  
That reminds me, I do have to say, it's a little sad to hear you don't want to talk about the big Russia news. I'm actually really interested to hear if you know something about how the people I heard were involved are doing, but I understand that it's a nice stress relief to only ever talk to me about sheep, so no pressure. It sounds like there's so much going on for you all the time.  
  
Best wishes,  
  
Reynir  
  
*  
  
Dear Reynir,  
  
Well, your question could be answered in a few ways. Usually one does stay with whatever family resources one has, but in situations like mine one would come to an agreement with some particular local village network. Not all networks have the resources to support a new project, but if they do, some assurance as to your character, competence and usefulness should be enough to merit setup help during the early stages.  
  
Some villages like to pre-emptively make a very specific plan for integrating your production into the network as soon as possible, while others are less stringent ("less organised" might also be a good description). I doubt I will have many issues either way, as the usefulness of wool and mutton is quite uncontroversial and my record of sticking to long-term projects is well attested. I have not heard of things working quite the same way in Iceland, but I can't imagine the idea is completely unknown outside of Finland, so I hope this actually answers what you meant to ask.  
  
Regarding your dreams - well, I wasn't going to mention this unless it became very relevant, but you are right. A good friend of mine who I've lived with for many years (let us call her J.) is pregnant at the moment, and should be due in the first part of summer. The mage said it's likely that it will be not very long before Juhannus itself. I suppose I should let you know it's near certain I will be writing less around that time, as the summer is busy enough in Keuruu to begin with.  
  
Now, I apologise that this is again personal, but it's interesting to note given our usual discussions - while all of us in the house do anticipate the baby eagerly, and the administrator here is being very reasonable about the time J. will have to take over hiding the child until its luonto appears, J. seems increasingly on the fence about the prospect of bringing it up in Keuruu. I have not pushed too much regarding my own thoughts, but I know she has overheard the conversation between S. and myself. As ever, one must not count chickens before they hatch, but on some level I wonder where this will go.  
  
I guess it must seem very interesting from the outside, the "big news" about Russia. My apologies, but I really wouldn't say I have anything to share about it. If I was to share something, it would be the general impression that all the people involved are quite done with others talking about them. Please, tell me some news of your own. I remember that you were taking a longer route in your studies at the Academy; has that finished yet?  
  
Best wishes,  
  
Laura  
  
P.S. I just realised I didn't answer your question about Finnish names. Sometimes in Keuruu there is confusion about which Jussi, Pekka or Matti someone means. I suppose that's the closest thing.  
  
P.P.S. Those mittens sound lovely. I am sure your mother will appreciate them.  
  
*  
  
Dear Laura,  
  
Oh, we don't do it like that in Iceland really! Well, I know my sister Guðrún has some friends in Reykjavik who sort of work that way, but they only use the system for their ~~weird~~ special art. You would not believe some of the things Guðrún's friends decide to do. Reyjkavik is full of such funny people. I have been there many times now, but I still can't get used to it. One time was to go see one of those weird plays with Guðrún. I didn't understand what it meant at all, but maybe that's because I am not that great with that kind of thing. Maybe you would get it. As you know, I don't know much about Finland, but all the Finns I have met seem very into skulls, which is what this lady also seemed to mostly be about. She was very good at waving skulls around and taking off her clothes, but if she asked me for constructive criticism I would say she was slightly less good at making her poetry rhyme and singing in tune. Anyway, sorry, I think I understand what you mean about Finland's villages. I got distracted there. It's a distracting memory.  
  
I'm so glad to hear you are all happy about your friend's baby! Are you going to send me pictures? If I'm really honest I think lambs are cute much earlier than our babies are, but I guess there won't be much time to get a picture when it's still at that weird wrinkly stage anyway, so by the time someone takes a picture it will probably be as cute as a button. If your friend still feels weird about keeping the baby in Keuruu later, I bet a sheep farm would be a great place for it. You know, I can't imagine growing up without sheep. What do children who don't live on sheep farms do on cold mornings when their hands are getting cracked, if they don't have a fleecy friend to rub their hands on? How do they manage to enjoy waking up in the morning if they can't hear bleating in the distance? Maybe I am just way more about sheep than most people, but as you say, we agree very much about how good they are, so you understand!  
  
Okay, I think I get the hint. I won't ask about those guys again. But I do have some news about the training. It's almost done, even though I have been taking a lot of time over it to keep up with the farm work. I'm not sure what I will do with all of the things I've learned, because compared to some places I've been, my sheep farm in Iceland seems like the last place that needs a lot of protection magic. Guðrún keeps telling me it shouldn't be about a specific goal, because I have a talent and should develop it for its own sake, but having a goal wouldn't exactly hurt, I think. I guess we're both in a very "wait and see" part of our lives. You must be well into this year's lambs and all the other warm weather work by now, so I won't expect a fast reply. I am busy too, and I feel like you will have even more to get done with sheep soon. I'm not sure if that feeling is related to visions or just wishful thinking. It's still sometimes hard to tell.  
  
Best wishes,  
  
Reynir


	2. Chapter 2

"Anyway, whatever, sorry, that was a lot of words. The point, though, the point is." Emil was ending the long ramble he'd gone on after hearing about Virpi's latest interaction with Lalli. The whole kitchen had been audience to it, but Lalli was the only intended target. Lalli knew exactly what Emil was about to say next, because he'd heard some variant of this rambling lecture about a dozen times now, and it always ended the same way. "She treats you like shit, and you don't deserve it." There it was. Emil sighed deeply and went back to cleaning the countertop, the outburst of frustration on Lalli's behalf seemingly exhausted for now.  
  
Usually this conversation ended in Lalli giving some neutral acknowledgement of at least the first fact, then moving on, but this time Miri piped up too. "He is right, you know. There's no reason for her to handle it quite like that."  
  
Lalli grumbled. He really didn't feel the need to talk about this, the answer he'd given to their inquiries about his day. So, he'd been treated like a social liability during some interaction with another visitor from the Nordic Council that Virpi needed him to talk to. A frustrated Virpi repeatedly grabbing him by the shoulder and moving him towards making eye contact was horrible, but not at all outside of what Lalli expected, and everyone else treating it like it must be was honestly getting grating. "Okay."  
  
Emil looked back, gesturing with the hand not holding a cloth. "See, I'm not the only one who thinks so."  
  
Jaana spoke next. "You definitely aren't."  
  
Sini had been engrossed in darning one of her socks, but also looked up to join in. "Yeah, she sounds like she's being pretty unappreciative, to be honest."  
  
"Mm." Laura added her opinion succinctly, but clearly.  
  
"This isn't actually what I came over to talk about." Lalli didn't know why they all felt the need to attack him like this, and was grateful for the fact he had an honest conversational escape. "Emil, I was thinking about something. Janne is nearly seven."  
  
"Mm? Yeah, he is." Emil seemed surprised that Lalli had brought this topic up without any prompting.  
  
"He's going to be a good scout."  
  
"Is he?" Emil looked even more surprised.  
  
"Yes." Lalli didn't know how to elaborate exactly on how he knew this, but he'd seen enough of Emil's charges by now to definitely see something of himself in the way Janne watched and moved through the world.  
  
"Oh." Emil smiled. "I didn't know you paid that much attention to either of them. That's really nice, Lalli."  
  
"They're probably going to start training him soon. I can ask to be the one to do it." Lalli had been a scout for over ten years now, and some of the responsibility of teaching younger ones would fall on him eventually. He'd been really pleased with himself when he had come up with this idea. Not only would he be doing Emil a favour, he would himself get out of being paired with someone totally unknown and unpredictable, which was something he'd been dreading. It seemed like a perfectly win-win situation, so Lalli's heart sank when Emil's face fell.  
  
"Lalli, he's six years old."  
  
"They won't actually send him out totally by himself until he's eleven or twelve."  
  
"That's not - I mean, it's better, but it's not -." Emil was at a loss for words.  
  
"If I start with him now, he'll really know what he's doing by the time he starts. It's safer for him." Lalli did guess what the problem was. He'd mentioned it before, the age he himself had started independent work, and the look of horror on Emil's face had been a real insight into the difference in their upbringing. What he said was true, though. Lalli did really want to give Emil the chance to feel better about this.  
  
Laura chipped in. "He's right. There's no avoiding this one if you're a child who's come to Keuruu under that kind of circumstance."  
  
Emil clearly still didn't like it. "I- well, Lalli, I mean, I know you're really good at what you do, and I do want him to be safe, it's just, you know. It's dangerous work and he's six." He said the last part as if it was an argument in itself, crossing his arms and looking very troubled.  
  
"Very nearly seven." Lalli did remember Emil's chatting about the two children he was always with, better than Emil likely expected him to. "So maybe I can start after his birthday."  
  
That was exactly what Lalli had done, grateful for the excuse to spend more time at his usual job and unavailable for more exhausting questions. The sessions he spent with Janne were infrequent enough that it wasn't a huge strain on him yet. With the time frame he'd given himself, there was no need to rush, which was ideal. Lalli did his best to explain everything that would eventually be necessary in as much detail as possible, impressing on Janne the importance of learning to write clearly as well as observe. It was hard to walk the line, wanting to make exceptions for someone that important to Emil, but knowing that one bad habit formed might someday mean death.  
  
Emil was obviously upset with Lalli's efforts. The fact he said over and over that he wasn't didn't make the fact less clear. "It's not you I'm upset at. On a logical level I appreciate it. You're doing your best." Lalli didn't want to just do his best, though, he wanted to do well and be above criticism. No matter how many times Emil told him it was fine, he had a certain expression on his face and manner in his voice when his charge returned exhausted from Lalli's training, and criticism was exactly what it looked and sounded like.  
  
The fact Emil was such an open book compared to others was usually a blessing, but now, the fact Lalli knew exactly how much he was resenting the situation ate at him. Despite the fact he'd never been afraid like that before, his fears that the resentment would start to seep into everything made him start hesitating to touch, just in case it came through Emil's hands somehow. Weeks went on and it never did, so Lalli felt bad again for ever even thinking about it. Emil was still as soft with him as ever, despite how unhappy Lalli's actions were making him. On a logical level, Lalli appreciated it, and knew this should count as just another predictably nice thing about him. It was confusing, though, that Emil could be so upset in some ways but unaffected in others.  
  
This issue made something feel like it had changed. Lalli had started to depend more than he'd realised on assuming Emil would never mislead him about things he thought and felt, so the gap between what he was told and what he observed in tone and expression cut incredibly deep. The hurt tore little holes in Lalli's guts and laced hairline-width aches through his chest. He had really thought his plan would help and be good, and logically he knew that it was both helpful and good. Logic not prevailing in this situation added another layer to how upsetting it was.  
  
"Janne says you told him he did a good job last time. I really appreciate you telling him that." Despite the attempts made at sincerity when he thanked Lalli, Emil was clearly still so sad. Lalli didn't know whether to resent how long it was taking for Emil to accept the way things had to be, or to just mirror that sadness in himself. His mind unfortunately settled on both.


	3. Chapter 3

On his thirtieth birthday, Onni had found a vodka bottle tied to his doorknob, with a note attached. The note had contained an apology about not having time to visit properly, and the hope he enjoyed the bottle's contents, signed by both Emil and Lalli. It was obviously Emil's effort, and a nice thought, especially given it was unlikely Lalli would ever have mentioned when it was without Emil actively asking.   
  
Onni did have an instant self-deprecating reflex when he found it, thinking to himself that the bottle and note together could easily be taken to mean "there you go old man, we know you enjoy drinking alone", but decided he actually found that interpretation of the gesture quite funny. He'd find someone to drink this with, he was sure.   
  
The fact of turning thirty was in general less funny than that. It brought into focus thoughts Onni had been having since he re-entered Keuruu, ones that had been initially pushed away by the flurry of attention but which surfaced anew as the quick breezes of spring finally began to shift winter's stillness. When he started going out without a hat, the wet wind off the snowmelt was so fresh in his hair, the chill so clean from wide lakes defrosting and the deep woods' shadows. His time in the wilds that winter had been often terrifying, but that was turning out to be among the less painful of his recollections. Having tasted the nourishment the forest gave his soul, he craved it again, a hunger that spun the strings in his heart just as keenly as physical hunger twists the stomach.   
  
He felt he had found something in himself, the intimate pains of survival outdoors letting the woods touch him in a way they hadn't in over a decade. He truly hadn't felt stunted as a person before the events of last winter, especially not since he had proven willing to travel to Sweden, but this journey had uprooted much more. Now those roots were being exposed to sunlight, solidifying in the air, crying out for inspection. Onni was realising that despite the danger, he wanted to return to living close to the forest.  
  
It wasn't something he should dwell on. Onni had no family outside Keuruu, unless he counted Taru, and he really felt like it was best he didn't see her again. There was nowhere for him to go besides where he was now, and that was the end of it. The only option besides remaining here was to be incredibly lonely, and the loneliness he already faced was another thing that was starting to bother him more and more.   
  
Travelling through danger had meant intimate interaction with his companions, day in, day out. Onni had adjusted to living alone in the past few years, convincing himself his reputation as a grump must mean he enjoyed that sort of thing. He had grown up with others around all the time, but then "others" had become just two people, and those two people had reached adulthood and stopped living with him. Having to be in close proximity to Emil and Lalli for weeks had served as an intense reminder of how unnatural he found his current arrangement. Of course, he had found the extreme of sharing a tent with two others to also be nearly intolerable at times, but fitting his life into a group rhythm was something he now realised he had been deeply missing.   
  
Had he not been feeling that lack of contact so keenly, he might have told Jaana not to bother him when she approached him with her question. His younger sister's death was no longer something that hurt him every day or even most days, but the topic being actively brought up still made him bristle and shut down. He'd been thinking a lot, though, about the way Tuuri had built networks around herself. When she was a teenager, he'd felt upset by it, wondering why it was "needy" of him to worry like he did but alright for her friends to know about her every move. Now he wondered if her ability to build connections entirely by choice was something he should have learned from earlier.   
  
When he thought about it, Tuuri's openness to new things and drive to carve out her own destiny was probably why she'd had a friend who'd loved her enough to name her firstborn after her. The instinct to push Jaana away and claim the right to hoard Tuuri's name seemed senseless when she herself had always looked outwards and onwards. He managed not to get too emotional when he told Jaana that her friends getting to carry on her name was probably what she would have wanted, but then Jaana had asked him "Do you really think so?", and explaining why he did indeed think so had set the tears off.   
  
The conversation they'd had then, about Tuuri's character and what they thought she'd want now, uncovered a lot of things Onni had never talked about. Jaana seemed a little more coherent than he was for the duration of their talk. Probably she and all of Tuuri's other old friends had already had these conversations, closer to when it had happened. The slight differences in how he and Jaana had seen her were incredibly raw to contemplate.   
  
Still, he was sure when he told Jaana that he would have no objection to her choice of name. Such an act was nothing but flattering. The thought of some child being told in many years about their name's origin was bittersweet, but he had put so much of his heart into loving his sister and all her brightness. It seemed unlikely he'd ever be able to give this honour himself, and Jaana had clearly been incredibly close to her, so this was the best way. Onni wondered if Jaana's eventual explanation to her child would include all the reasons Tuuri's friends had loved her.   
  
While Onni suspected this would eventually turn out to be some of the healthy catharsis he was aware some swore by, it had been embarrassing to cry that much in front of someone he'd gotten to know in the specific role of his little sister's friend. Afterwards, when Jaana told him she really felt she knew him better now, he had looked at the ceiling and felt awkward. She seemed very sincere about being glad of it, though. He tried to be a little more than noncommittal when she said he was welcome to visit them. Perhaps he would. It was hard for him to say in that moment. The lack of others around him felt very present after she left, and when Onni sat down that evening at his single-person sized table, he had to cry a little more.   
  
Onni eventually decided he should probably get Emil and Lalli to drink their gift with him. He was missing their company, after all. It took a few weeks for schedules to line up, but they did find a time one day to all sit together. Lalli suggested that one of the lower platforms of the watchtowers by the walls would allow them to enjoy some view well enough without disturbing the people working above. Evening was falling over the forest as they stared out over it and got drunk together in near silence. Emil didn't seem to take to that as naturally as Onni and Lalli did, but he did get the idea eventually, shutting up and also starting to just sip and stare at the woods. It was nice to enjoy the twin warmths of companionship and vodka, watching the light fade.   
  
Eventually, the fuzz on his brain and the sight of the tall trees turning to silhouettes was enough for Onni to want to say something. "I miss the forest."  
  
"It's dangerous for you." Lalli was slightly slumped where he sat, barely turning to address Onni as he answered.   
  
"I still miss it." Onni drank again. Emil didn't offer anything, just watching Onni sip vodka with his own expression distinctly bleary.   
  
Lalli made a small "mm" and patted Onni on the shoulder, gripping it for a moment before letting his hand fall again. The thoughts staggering around Onni's mind wobbled and finally sat down on a topic, which was wondering how long before now it had been since someone touched him of their own accord. He remembered it had been when Emil and Lalli had farewelled him after their long journey. Emil hugging him had been quite unexpected, Onni recalled, and it hadn't been repeated. Nobody was left that really hugged him, or indeed showed him any kind of explicit affection at all. That was a thought that merited more drinking, and heading to bed sooner rather than later. Everyone had things to do tomorrow, anyway.   
  
It wasn't that bad, Onni thought as he drifted off to sleep. He had plenty to do with his time. He was working on trying to connect with a couple of people more, and maybe that would help eventually with the general malaise he felt. As he faded out of awareness of his bed and into a slightly hazier than usual version of his dream space, the call of the forest almost seemed like something he could continue to ignore. Onni was sure that eventually he'd be fine. 


	4. Chapter 4

Emil sat in the kitchen, staring at the opposite wall in a reverie of worry. He'd known perfectly well that this was happening soon, and that these things took a while. He'd listened to a solid month of Jaana starting to talk daily about how incredibly heavy she felt, how she now really wanted her baby out of her sooner rather than later, how the warm days felt horrible like this. "She says it's going to be pretty big", she'd reported after a talk with her chosen mage, "but she has painkillers as well as the traditional stuff, and it happens every day, I guess." Now Jaana was in the nearest sauna to their house, the mage was with her, and he, Sini, Miri and Laura were sat in the kitchen waiting to hear how it had gone.  
  
Jaana had been a bit on edge wondering if it would be as bad as it sounded. Emil was astounded that she wasn't properly terrified. It wasn't as if he could strictly empathise, but the more he thought about everything to do with this, the more horrifying he found the idea. He didn't know how he'd failed to think earlier about what a painful process this must be to go through. A few weeks before, he'd told Lalli that as much as he loved kids and all, he was starting to feel really glad that nothing they ever did together could result in this situation.  
  
"It sounds terrifying, right?"  
  
When Lalli answered, he seemed to have heard a different question. "Her new magic might well be. Her luonto was already powerful enough before."  
  
"Wait, is she a mage?" Emil had been very surprised to not have heard this before now.  
  
"No."  
  
"Um, you lost me then. What magic?"  
  
Lalli had put on a face that said answering was difficult. "I don't know how to explain this."  
  
"Is it complicated?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Is it one of those things you can't explain because you've known it for so long?" Emil usually found that asking these kinds of questions made Lalli's explanations come more easily, and this particular problem was one they'd had a few times before.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Ah."  
  
They'd sat in silence for a while, then Lalli had started to ask questions that seemed strange, but that Emil did assume were related. He'd had to remind Lalli again that in Sweden, they used no magic at all, not even "normal" magic for things like keeping away beasts. Finally, this had resulted in Lalli illustrating his reference to magic with an example, starting to tell the story of the way his grandma had used to intimidate the forest's menaces into behaving.  
  
Apparently in Finland, certain powers were inherent to a woman who had previously given birth. One power was that showing her vulva to the woods and screaming was an effective way to keep hostile creatures away from a settlement. "So, because she'd had twins on top of being a mage, her _vitunvoima_ was very great. People trusted that if she stood for a few hours, displaying her power and shouting, their houses would be safe for a long time." Lalli said this so matter-of-factly, seemingly satisfied that this explained exactly the kind of thing he meant.  
  
Emil really hadn't felt this much like a foreigner here in quite a while. "And soon Jaana will be able to do that?"  
  
"In theory. Not as much use for it in Keuruu. Also, it helps more if she has had many children, and this is just one." Lalli let the statement sit for a moment before embellishing it. "Although Onni said that once a fisherman insulted my mother, and when she walked over his net to get her revenge, it still ruined it very badly."  
  
"Huh." After a little more thought, Emil had another question. "So, the um, _vitunvoima_ makes you very powerful."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Do you wish you had that kind of power? Like, I guess you work pretty hard at the magic, so do you get jealous that there's a kind you can't use?"  
  
Lalli had seemed confused by him asking that. "Why would I wish for it? It's not for me."  
  
"Oh, um. Fair enough." Emil had been told many times as a child that girls' things were "not for him" and been very jealous indeed, but he supposed his mother's makeup was a little different to primal fertility magic. "Wait, the fishing net story - Is this why Onni got so upset about me letting Viivi run over some nets one time?"  
  
"Did you do that?" Lalli looked a little taken aback.  
  
"Yes. Sorry. Nobody told me about how it actually works. Surely she's so small though?"  
  
"Mm. She still has some power even as a child herself. Now you know." Lalli was right, now he knew. That conversation had certainly been an enlightening insight into how Finnish magic worked, and brought home how little Emil understood still. The concept of showing your genitals to the woods for safety against beasts seemed far too undignified to really be how magic worked, but well, Emil wasn't the one here who could make the weather change. Lalli was obviously far more of an authority on these things, so Emil accepted this as new information. It had been an enduring mystery to him, why Finnish soldiers drew eye-like stylised vulvas on things rather than the cartoonish penis an immature Swede would have drawn, and maybe this apparently culture-wide fixation was all part of the same system somehow.  
  
Emil was still staring at the wall, lost in wondering how much of this magic would protect his friend. He had no idea if the "power" Lalli had described was actually to the benefit of new mothers, and everyone was now so sleepy, the night wearing on as they waited. At least the skalds wouldn't be expected at work early the next morning, as Virpi had been actually insistent everyone took at least a little time over this. This was a topic she was more than reasonable about, and Jaana herself would be taking some time to stay in the sauna and recuperate afterwards. Usually in Keuruu they were so public that one person keeping it for a week would be unfeasible, but the most convenient one had been reserved and run without endless new people for a few days in order to provide her with somewhere clean.  
  
The light outside was still coming through the window, it being only a couple of weeks before Juhannus, and Laura and Sini played cards. At three in the morning, the mage appeared, a middle-aged woman with a sharp face.  
  
"You're all family?"  
  
On receiving their assurances that they were indeed the people who would be involved in raising the child, she allowed them to follow her. Nobody stayed for very long, as Jaana needed to rest, and it was well past the time everyone else would normally have slept. However, all did take enough time to give their welcomes to Tuuri Hassan, making tired cooing noises at the diminutive size of her hands and feet. Emil was entranced by how small she was. Despite the fact her hair was still stuck to her face with sweat and her voice was husky with exhaustion, Jaana quipped immediately that she could have done with it being smaller.  
  
It was a pity that Finns hid their children from outsiders for so long after their birth. Lalli told Emil exactly the same thing all his housemates had told him, which was that they should be as hidden as possible until their luonto appeared. The fact that the luonto appeared at the same time as the teeth was yet another matter-of-factly bizarre part of this that nobody questioned, and which Emil supposed he'd better take as truth.  
  
Emil tried to describe the baby to Lalli anyway, convinced that it was very important that everyone know about the fact she had huge dark eyes with eyelashes you could see, and her hands were exactly such a size. Lalli really had no response to the gooey-voiced description, but Emil had never expected him to be all that excited about this. He did his part listening and nodding as Emil told him more mundane facts about what was going on, mostly everything the house was doing together to make it slightly less exhausting for Jaana. While she responded to almost all of Tuuri's cries for food herself, handing over a pumped-out bottleful of her milk only when she was truly desperate to sleep, there were many other things that could be done. Mostly this meant more laundry and less sleeping. Involving a team of four other people had probably been a very good move.  
  
Despite Lalli's continual ambivalence towards children, he was still doing his best for Janne. The commotion of a new baby in the house was a slight distraction from how heartbreaking Emil had been finding this situation, but couldn't totally take away the twinge he felt every time Lalli took Janne out. At least Lalli seemed to have stopped thinking Emil was angry at him for this. Emil did sort of see why Lalli had initially assumed that was the case. Janne leaving and coming back upset Emil every time, because he felt very strongly that it just wasn't right to start taking someone so young and so troubled into danger already, and that upset must have been visible. It wasn't Lalli's fault, though. Emil truly meant it when he said it wasn't Lalli he was angry at. There was certainly a list of people he might plausibly be angry at for making this arrangement necessary, but Lalli wasn't one of them.  
  
The chance that Lalli still didn't believe him about not being angry did prod at Emil's mind. Lalli had stopped with that soul-crushing flinching, though, and begun to come over just to talk more often. He wouldn't have done that if he didn't really want the company. There was so much to do, the summer meaning Cleansing work as well as every other thing Emil was now responsible for, and there was absolutely no time to dwell on anything unproductive. There was barely even time to see anybody he didn't live or work with. Emil just hoped that if there was still a problem, Lalli would remember his requests to tell him about things like that. Probably Lalli would. Logically, there was no reason to assume there was still an issue between them. He'd certainly done his best to never lie to Lalli, and had come to expect honesty from his side too.  
  
The summer seemed to be passing so quickly, and Jaana started to arrange going back to work, with some changes made to the schedule for the time being. It turned out that this was not the only alteration to her lifestyle she was considering. During a big house meeting that Tuuri thankfully mostly slept through, everyone listened as Jaana prompted Laura to share some plans she'd been keeping close to her chest for some time. Emil, Sini and Miri listened intently as Laura carefully explained that she'd been having some thoughts about her sheep and her future plans. As they took shape in front of him, Emil listened first with a little worry about it breaking up their household, then with great interest as he realised what this might mean. He hadn't forgotten Laura's comments months before about Janne's training being a product of childhood in specifically Keuruu. The thought of Lalli, too, having an escape route from being so undervalued made the idea seem potentially very good indeed. When the time came for Laura to ask how many people would be interested if she did make the plan happen, Emil's answer was immediately positive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: In actual Finnish folk belief, the tradition Lalli describes his grandma acting out is specifically directed towards bears. I have taken Minna's cue here, as she transforms the "kallohonka" tradition (also formerly only directed at bears) into a more general activity, so perhaps this one works the same way. The stylised eye-like vulva Emil recalls seeing is a "kirkkovene", which you can see on toilet doors and underpasses all across Finland.


	5. Chapter 5

All things considered, Lalli thought the summer was going fairly well. There were less questions all the time, and the Cleansing work at the edge of the forest was low-pressure and locally run enough that there was nothing he needed to do about it, so life seemed more or less normal. He was getting used to the way Emil reacted to his training efforts with Janne. Him being obviously sad every time Lalli did it was still disturbing, but Lalli had stopped mentioning that he noticed it, so now Emil had no reason to keep up the horrible denial that it was true. It wasn't ideal, but it could have been much worse. The new baby in their house made visiting awkward, but again, far worse things had happened. It was enough that there was relative peace in all parts of Lalli's life.   
  
The uneasy peace was broken when Emil dropped the news that he wanted to leave Keuruu. He seemed so excited to tell Lalli about it, especially the part where Merja had "seemed relieved, actually" at him wanting to take Viivi and Janne with him. Apparently after some thought, everyone he lived with had ended up keen on the plan they'd come up with. To Lalli, it felt like it had come out of nowhere.   
  
"So, Laura is working out a place we can all go, where you wouldn't have to train Janne anymore, because we can decide for ourselves when people need to do things. And you wouldn't have to go on any more missions." Emil looked really hopeful when he finished his explanation of everything he thought was possible.  
  
"My job is here." Lalli didn't know what to say. He was in shock at how sudden this was.  
  
"You could have a job there too. Well, not really a job, but lots of stuff to do. You already do really well helping to keep us fed, and you like doing that kind of thing more than your actual job, right? I remember you saying." Lalli had said that, yes, but that didn't mean he thought he was allowed to just go do it instead of working.  
  
This was a lot to process. Lalli tried to start working through all the things, one by one. "So you don't want me training Janne."  
  
"Uh. I mean, that's not really the point, the point is we can all decide on how we want to do things." Emil smiled. "Almost all the things you like to do anyway are really useful, you could do them all day if you wanted."  
  
Emil avoiding questions was a terrible sign. Lalli crossed his arms, closing himself off. "You told me you weren't mad about me doing that."   
  
Emil sighed and his shoulders slumped. "Lalli, I thought we- I told you, I'm not angry at you. And that's not the point right now, the point is-"   
  
"You want to leave so I can't do it anymore." Emil making plans to leave town over something Lalli had done definitely seemed like evidence against his claim to not be mad. It seemed so unlike him to keep denying it.  
  
"I just want us to be able to live like normal people." Emil's phrasing there was not good. The reaction that inspired in Lalli was immediate and strong. Of all the things for Emil to be talking about, "normal" was probably the one he was least qualified to discuss.  
  
"You do not know what normal is." Lalli decided the best move after that was to leave the situation. Surely Emil would realise how bad this plan was soon. It made Lalli feel deeply panicked, and Emil wasn't usually ever someone who inspired this horrible uprooted feeling. Lalli hoped Emil would think about this and understand. Arguing was something they hadn't done in a very, very long time, and it felt even more awful now than it had in the early days. He'd really thought this was something they no longer had to do. Being wrong about that was yet another unexpected, horrible hurt.   
  
In the time between that and their next meeting, Lalli tried to think through what had gone wrong. His main conclusion was that Emil clearly still did not appreciate a lot of things about how life worked. He didn't know how he'd failed to anticipate this. Emil really had seemed like he understood a lot of things better now, but it made sense that his idea of "normal" would still be incredibly warped. Emil's suggestion that Lalli pack up his life and go elsewhere permanently, when he'd spent well over a decade moulding himself around how things worked in Keuruu, was so unthinkingly cruel. That process had been so much work, and undoing all of it would be disastrous. Life had been so difficult before he'd learned.   
  
When they met again, Emil tried to explain that he wasn't just concerned for Janne, and he should have been clearer. Apparently a lot of his concern was for Lalli, too. The old refrain of "she treats you like shit!" came up regarding Virpi, several times. Emil just did not get it. Moving somewhere new would not resolve this issue. Lalli didn't know how to drill it into his head that the things he was so obsessed with were not even slightly unique to Virpi, that moving somewhere else wouldn't save Lalli from anything.  
  
"It's not just the dangerous mission, I mean, I am really, really worried she'll make you do that again but - but she just doesn't treat you well, even during the normal times. She grabs you for looking at people in a way she thinks is wrong, and makes it your fault when it isn't. I wish you didn't have to even know someone like that." Emil's tone was almost pleading when he said this.   
  
"Tuuri hit me for staring plenty of times, and you all named the baby after her."   
  
Emil looked shocked that he'd said that. Lalli felt bad, but it was true. They all told him Virpi shouldn't be allowed to manhandle him and yell at him, but their outrage was totally inconsistent, and he had noticed. A couple of the women Emil lived with had been like that themselves, before they started interacting with Lalli primarily as an extension of their more likeable housemate, and there was no guarantee the behaviour wouldn't return.   
  
"Yeah but she didn't... she didn't make you go out where it's... uh. Ah, shit." Emil trying to contradict him just brought up more points on which everyone was being deeply hypocritical. Emil looked very lost and quiet, staring at his shoes for a long moment, then continued in a small voice. "I don't think she meant to be like that."   
  
Lalli knew that. It didn't change his point, which was that he had gotten used to the system here, and everything wrong with it would be just the same somewhere else. Emil's obsession with what people were and weren't allowed to do to him made no sense as a thing to dwell on. Whatever Emil's opinion was, it was a fact that people made Lalli do arbitrary and illogical things, all kinds of people, good and bad ones. It was a hard system to learn, yes, but Lalli was trying his best to make it less hard. Not only less hard on himself, but less hard on someone Emil cared about as well. It was as if Emil had no idea how much work all of it was.  
  
"You know, I bet if someone had really talked to her about it, she would have stopped." Emil was continuing on the topic Lalli had brought up, and Lalli was realising that this was actually incredibly upsetting. He regretted saying it for several reasons now, but Emil was still talking. "If she was here and doing it now, I'd be trying to talk to her about it, because you're right, it wasn't okay then either." Lalli didn't actually want to talk about whether or not those things had been okay, because they were never going to happen again anyway, and he still missed Tuuri enough that he wasn't counting that as a blessing. Once again, he had to leave the situation, and Emil tried to call after him. Lalli couldn't begin to think of a time when he would be ready to have another conversation like this, so had nothing to say in return. 


	6. Chapter 6

Miri really didn't know what to do with Emil. This was the third time he'd spent half the evening standing by her somewhere in the house, trying to articulate what was going wrong between him and Lalli. Now he'd waylaid her in the little hallway between their rooms.  
  
"I talked to him again about it, right, and he still thinks that, I don't know, he can't... he can't learn to live somewhere else, and it'll be fine here as long as he keeps just doing what he's always done, and" - Emil had to pause to take a deep breath - "and he doesn't want to come with us, and what am I going to _do_?"  
  
Miri told him the same thing she'd said the last two times. "Emil, I'm sorry. This is a horrible decision to have to make, of course you're finding it upsetting." She squeezed his shoulder, thinking on plans of how she'd try to distract him once this was done. "You're going to have to work it out, though, what you're doing if he isn't coming with us. What you're doing with Janne and Viivi, especially." She truly felt for him trying to navigate this, and from her own side really hoped they could work it out, although she was getting less hopeful by the day.   
  
On some sad realistic level, it made sense that something like this would happen eventually. As much as she'd been mentally cheering for Emil and Lalli's relationship, it was both their first, and few people who got together at the age of twenty stayed together. Their amazing selflessness with regard to the other had seemed very genuinely special, but it appeared that this was just a nigh-unresolvable clash of life plans.   
  
"Of course I'm going to bring them. I can't _not_ take the chance to bring them somewhere better." Emil said it like there was never any question of him not taking that option, and knowing him, Miri supposed there hadn't been.   
  
"So you're coming whether he does or not."   
  
"No! I need to convince him to come with us!" Here they were again, back at square one. Miri just sighed, and Emil looked at her pleadingly, as if her advice could somehow save him from this decision. "You don't _understand_. He's in danger." Emil's tone had abruptly shifted from loud rambling into something more desperate. "Look, I'm worried about the things he says when we argue about this. I can't, I don't know how to tell him he's wrong without it being, I don't know, but it keeps coming up, and the more I think about the more I feel like, like..."   
  
He trailed off, and Miri prodded at the last statement. "What things?"  
  
Emil took a moment to respond, and when he did, he sounded abruptly more choked up. "Well, he thinks that if he keeps behaving, life's going to be fine, but doing what he was told here was what nearly got him killed, and I, look, am I being crazy? Virpi knows what he's like, she knows!" That change of topic brought on a rise in volume again. "She knows he won't say no to her and she doesn't do this to _anyone_ else and I feel like I'm going out of my mind trying to tell him that if he keeps letting her do the... the _thing_ she does, with making it normal, I mean you know bad, but _normal_ bad, for a while with him, then doing more _things_..."  
  
Miri felt her guts twist as the description Emil was giving suddenly started to feel horrifically familiar. She didn't know how she'd failed to see exactly what the situation was here earlier. Listening to Emil's first descriptions of Lalli "knowing the system" had made it sound like nothing more than how Lalli always liked to fit into some kind of system. Lalli wanting to stick with that had seemed like a sad but understandable clash of priorities, but now that Emil mentioned Virpi, the fact of Lalli having learned to live in someone's system very well started to claw open memories Miri really didn't like to visit often.   
  
"... what if next time, it actually gets him killed? It's not safe for him! And I don't _understand_ , because if he just _left_ -"  
  
"People usually don't." Miri interrupted with unusual flatness, sinking her face into her hands. Through her fingers, she could see that Emil was looking at her in surprise. She had to continue, though, because it genuinely seemed that Emil had actually made it this far in life without ever learning this lesson. The idea of someone reaching their twenties without learning this made Miri feel a little bitter, but she repressed the reaction, because this now was important. She continued to speak bluntly. "The fact the situation might kill them doesn't mean people just leave, not when they've built everything around fitting into it. And you can't make them." She took her hands off her face and hugged herself, leaning against the wall for some comfort.   
  
Emil looked even more worried. "Well, I don't want to make him do anything, people making him do things is the whole problem, but I... he _needs_ to do it. Am I being... I don't want to force him, ever! But he - I don't know how I - how do you -"  
  
"They have to be the one to decide."   
  
"But he won't!" Emil was beseeching. Miri didn't know why he thought she could somehow change her mind and have the rest of the universe follow. The bitter taste in her mouth persisted, but she still felt truly bad for him. This was one of the worse realisations about the world that one eventually had to have. She supposed it made sense he'd try to somehow bargain with the universe via her.  
  
Emil was starting to cry, and Miri would probably be having her own cry about this topic later, but she pressed on. She wouldn't be getting any of her sadness about this being brought up soothed, not when Emil was so deep into his own panic over Lalli, and she understood that was how it was today. "Look, you can't... you need to make sure he knows you're waiting for him, but for all that's holy, stop making him feel like you think he's wrong."  
  
"But he's... he's being..."  
  
"You have to keep telling him there's something other than the system and maybe one day he'll believe you. Maybe." Miri was aware her explanation sounded a little inconsistent, but situations like this made it impossible to act perfectly, and this was another thing Emil might still have to learn.   
  
"Laura said we can move out even sooner than she thought, though." Emil wasn't bothering trying not to cry anymore, just letting it happen while he continued to fret helplessly and tried unsuccessfully to talk normally. "I don't have enough time to tell him - to tell him even close to how much I wish I could do for him." The blotchiness springing up on his face highlighted the bags under his eyes, the wet eyelashes coated with tears, and the scar that was now starting to fade on his cheek. Emil's bargaining manner returned when he next spoke, his voice hitching especially on the last phrase. "We'd make something that works for him, right? There's so much he's good at. He's so good."  
  
Miri remembered that if Lalli wasn't coming, this would really call into question the whole last three years of Emil's life. When she spoke again, she did her best to make her voice softer. After having to drag up the memory of whatever advice she had for this situation, it was hard to work out another decent response. "If you do end up, ah - if you two can't stay together after this, I hope you don't regret coming over here. We're all glad you came to stay with us, you know. You've done a lot of good."   
  
"No." Emil's response was immediate, and brought forth enough further tears that he started leaning on the wall as well, curling up a little and heaving with heavy breath. Miri hoped their conversation here wasn't going to wake up the baby, but Emil was speaking quite quietly now, so she decided against reminding him. Emil hugged himself more tightly, his face screwing up. "Oh, shit, no, I wouldn't regret any of it. Especially not a single thing I've done for him. No." The force with which he realised this made Miri's eyes prickle, too. Coming from any multi-year relationship, that would be a big statement, but the way tears made that scar redden made it impossible to forget how unusually powerful that statement was coming from Emil.   
  
Miri could only sigh again. "I'm glad you don't regret knowing us."  
  
"Not at all." Emil had moved into a stage of sadness where aside from the trembling of teariness, his voice was a near-blank whisper. Miri still felt like she was reaching over a gap here, somehow. Usually she was very instinctive with these things, or so she was told. This topic really was not a good one.   
  
It was kind of mechanical when she asked if Emil wanted a hug, but he didn't seem to notice. He cried into her hair for a few minutes, then shakily apologised for being such a mess. Miri tried to get a few more things done with the evening, not getting very far. She wasn't sure if she was even unhappy that so many people were out and unable to ask what was wrong. Somehow, the evening stretched quite a way, keeping track of time seeming very hard. Emil was in bed by the time she started to head that way herself. When she passed the door and heard the sound of him crying himself to sleep, she went back downstairs, poured a glass of water and started to place it just inside.  
  
"Miri?" Emil looked up from where he'd been curled on his bed, and Miri decided to actually enter the room to put it on his table.   
  
"Try not to get too dehydrated. You'll feel worse in the morning." For some reason, the act of bringing the glass over to him made him cry even harder. "Emil?"  
  
"No, it's just, the last time I did that for someone it, um. No, I'm sorry, go to bed. Thank you." Miri was kind of grateful that it didn't turn into another talk. She truly felt awful for him being torn between twin drives to rescue people, especially when the situations they were in were this one, but she simply couldn't deal with any more of it today. This had all been so tiring that she didn't have the energy to cry too much herself, but over the next few hours of trying to sleep, her eyes definitely left their mark on her pillow.


	7. Chapter 7

Lalli went to work, returned, went out again. When he had the time, he visited one of the two people who liked to see him. Every time one of those visits was to Emil, they ended up arguing about this thing, this question of whether it was a good idea to stay in Keuruu. Slowly, Lalli realised that this time, Emil was not coming around to his point of view. When the implications of that became clear enough to start being truly felt, it was like some fragile line running through his body had snapped in many places and left its pointy ends in all his organs.   
  
The first few times, it had been just frustration and sadness from Emil. After that, it had turned into hints of anger and disbelief, softer than most people's would ever seem but still clearly present. Finally, it had come back around again to a weird passivity. Lalli didn't know what this last thing was meant to accomplish. When they talked, it was like Emil wasn't even trying to convince him of anything anymore, despite the fact it must have been on his mind. Lalli didn't know if he preferred this. At least he was getting some time with the Emil he'd gotten to know, before it all ended. Emil did slip into his repetitive thing, one or two more times. Lalli knew what Emil thought Virpi treated him like. He could have recited that one through a coma now.  
  
Lalli didn't know how to process that part, the ending. He really hadn't planned on this happening, but this was clearly a failure on his part, because of course most of the time these things ended. People in songs and stories were obsessed with the ends of relationships. Lalli was starting to see why. Emil was still here for now, but he was going to leave, and that fact was ruining every day. Usually Lalli was a great believer in the fact that you could repress any emotion if you tried hard enough, but right now it seemed that this wound would be breathlessly painful forever.   
  
He didn't know what one did in this situation, so he supposed they were just going to keep having sad conversations until the day Emil left. Part of him said there was no point prolonging it, but another said that this was all he was going to get forever. He followed the part of himself that didn't want to stop seeing Emil, knowing it prolonged the pain but unable to bring himself to walk away.  
  
The leaves starting to fall as summer ended too felt like mockery and validation all at once. Out on patrol, Lalli visited every mound and ditch of the land he knew well, and his sorrow collected in its furrows like the blood of a cut finger sitting in a knuckle's creases. It felt like the whole forest remembered Emil. Despite Lalli's anger at Emil for leaving, he couldn't hate what he heard whispered back to him, and that made him feel so desperately hopeless his ribs could have been made of lead.   
  
His whole life, he had called to the water and the stone in his solitary rambles, telling them _I see what lives here, and I name it all, every shining bit of dew on the web stretching between_. Now, there were years of wandering invocation still ringing around these woods, repetition back to him, telling of _the heat of breath_ just as often as _the turn of seasons_. What he'd known with Emil had become one with what he thought of as the natural order of things, the rhythms of his own body moulding around another human's until that human became a part of them.   
  
It had changed how he processed responding to his own senses, making frost a chance for warmth and hunger a chance for connection, altering the meaning of winter and summer. What was reality made of, if not the feelings of walking through the world and the knowledge of how it cycled? This thought occupied him whenever he felt cold, or heat, or hunger. It made something he knew was just a rift between two humans feel like a jagged gash in the fabric of the universe.  
  
Lalli kept going to work, kept remembering all that had been good, and wondered why Emil was doing this to him. It was all he could do to pick up the shreds of normality remaining around him and try to return to how life had been before. He knew it had been alright, before any of the things that had led here happened. His memory of it certainly wasn't of being actively unhappy all the time. Being that solitary hadn't been terrible, although now he thought about returning to it, the idea felt awfully hollow. Still, it was something he had done before. It had been more or less predictably safe, and being left to that was something.  
  
One day, Lalli was sent a note saying that another one of his few evenings off would involve a trip to see Virpi. No emotional reaction registered when he read it, only the taking of a mental note and the thought that he should leave a physical note on his own cupboard door. There was a slight sting when he remembered who'd gotten him in the habit of leaving notes for himself like that, it being quite painful to realise how much of even the most brittle habit and most reflexive internal monologue had been shaped by Emil, but he pushed it down. Duty called.   
  
A few days afterwards, he stood by Virpi, who had beckoned him closer to a table where she was stood with a map. More area of Russia, to the north this time. She started, in the tone she used when giving an explanation that she was very sure of.  
  
"So, Lalli. This is a little short notice, but notifying you has fallen by the wayside as I have been quite busy lately. Several of my key workers have given me notification that they are going to leave and it's been quite chaotic. I believe you were friends with a few of them."  
  
Lalli made the most noncommittal noise he could possibly still pass off as being affirmative.   
  
"I take it you are not going with them, and I'm very glad to hear it! Good to know you have some sense of loyalty. I have several plans in the works, involving collaboration with the Russians. I know you can't speak to them, but you seem to enjoy lone work, so -"  
  
Virpi went on to explain further the idea she had in mind for another mission, totally away from anything Lalli knew well, probably involving trying to communicate with people who didn't speak Finnish. After everything from the beginning of the year, through to the emotional turmoil of the summer, contemplating the idea of it was like a sledgehammer through the fragile frame keeping Lalli together. Well before she could finish, Lalli's hands were on his ears, drowning out anything that could make him feel worse. The shreds of predictability he was clinging to were being drawn out of reach, and it was far too much to handle. He was so beyond fear of unprofessionalism that when Virpi started waving a hand in front of his face, he just clenched his eyes shut harder.  
  
"Lalli!" She was pulling his hands off his ears. "Don't be rude, I wasn't done talking. Don't you want to hear this plan?"  
  
"No!" Lalli wrestled his hands back, smacking Virpi's away. Once he'd said it, he felt a further panic setting in as he realised what he'd done.  
  
"Excuse me?" Virpi was raising her voice enough to get through the block. "Lalli, I think you've misunderstood the way orders work-"   
  
Virpi's rambling continued, and Lalli felt more and more lost in the sound of blood rushing as he tried to press hard enough into his eardrums for everything to stop for a moment. She was treating him like a child, or - _like shit, and you don't_ \- she was treating him terribly, and - _and you don't deserve it_ \- and it hurt more now than it used to, because he'd learned that sometimes people weren't like this, and when he compared some people - _you don't deserve it_ was a thought that rose up, so embedded in his brain he couldn't help but latch onto it. Lalli still wasn't sure it was true, but everything was so swirled into mush by the realisation that even staying put could not make life behave. This phrase was predictable, and that was something.  
  
"No, no, no, no. _No_." Lalli said it again and again with shakes of his head for emphasis, feeling both freer and more sickly terrified every time. Eventually, Virpi stopped talking, and Lalli opened his eyes to the sight of her fuming. When she saw him responding, she started again.  
  
"You are being so _rude_ -"  
  
Lalli cut her off by spinning on his heel and leaving, hands still on his ears. He felt like he'd just come from fighting a giant, and nearly bumped into several people on his way out. His hands weren't free enough to put his hood up, so the heavy autumn rain soaked into his hair, leaving him shivering despite the relative warmth of the season. There was time yet before this turned to snow, but it was still icy on his neck and forehead. Lalli's feet carried him through Keuruu as thoughts began to stabilise, following the same route they had countless times, leaving him standing underneath Emil's window and finally coming back to himself enough to start realising what had happened.   
  
The last half hour was replaying itself in his mind, bringing on further shocks of panic and nausea. He'd just refused an order, purely because it was too chaotic to handle on top of everything else. That wasn't something he could do. He should try to behave better from now on, and maybe -   
  
Emil threw his window open, a bucket of soapy water in his hands, ready to pour out onto the street below. Looking below to check if the street was clear, he saw Lalli standing there. "Lalli!" He looked very surprised, which made sense. Lalli had stopped coming in his window many weeks ago, and had been sticking to planned visits. "Uh, are you coming inside? You look soaked." Well, there was nowhere else Lalli could go to feel any better.  
  
Lalli leapt up and caught the slippery, skinny windowsill on the lower floor, grabbing at the drain and guttering as he drew himself up further, ending up with his elbows on Emil's windowsill and only his head and shoulders through the window. His hair was dripping onto the floor of Emil's room, which looked like Emil had just mopped it. Emil put his bucket down and stepped back, apologising for the bucket - "we're just trying to get everything clean before we leave, so" - and offering Lalli a hand to pull himself in by. Lalli took it, and sat on Emil's windowsill, rain still spattering against his back as he arranged his legs inside.   
  
Emil was giving Lalli the same careful, hopeless look he'd been giving him for weeks now. "Did something happen? You look... upset."  
  
Lalli couldn't begin to describe what was going on now, so retreated back into not coping. At the sight of Lalli curling up in his windowsill with screwed-up eyes and wet hair being pressed into his ears by his hands, Emil spoke no further and went to bring over one of his blankets. It was clearly going to get rained on there, but he gently spread it around Lalli, sure not to make too much contact as he offered a place to hide in. Lalli took it, scrunching the wooly folds of it around his face. It was scratchy, but it dulled the sound around in a way that he really needed right now.   
  
There was some space to think, and when Lalli did that, a few things started to become clearer. The first was that he certainly was not getting any peace staying in Keuruu, even if here was where he had learned to function best. This realisation brought on many more minutes under the blanket, which in turn brought on a second realisation, based on observing that Emil was still standing there without interrupting his recovery. There was always the risk of people making it hard to function, it seemed, but despite so many of Lalli's conscious convictions, he really did feel that a person could represent safety.   
  
Finally, Lalli said something. "I'm really stupid."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I'm really stupid. I think I need to come with you." Lalli lifted the blanket off his face and pulled it closer around his body, shivering slightly at the feeling of sitting still on a damp windowsill for so long.   
  
Emil's face was a picture of hope so tentative it was almost pure disbelief. "You think you need to...?"  
  
Lalli's mind catapulted backwards, wavering between new realisations and months of habit. His voice somehow produced something more coherent than the inside of his own mind, although it wavered a lot as he spoke. "I'm scared." The fuzz was coming back as the shock of saying no and walking away renewed itself.  
  
Emil made a helplessly sad noise and put his arms out in a gesture that probably wasn't even conscious. Lalli dragged himself forward out of the windowsill, dropping the increasingly wet blanket on the floor and burrowing into Emil's shoulder with all the desperation of a rabbit digging a deeper hiding place for itself. Emil slowly wrapped his arms around Lalli, feeling him for any hint of withdrawal, then was finally satisfied enough to put real pressure into the hug. Lalli's heart was pounding, and Emil must have been able to feel it.  
  
"I realised some stuff. It's not good here." Lalli's voice was very small, but his mouth was very close to Emil's ear, so that probably worked. Saying this still felt like it wasn't quite real, but it seemed like it followed from what Virpi had done today.   
  
"Mm-hmm." Emil wasn't trying to draw the conversation out. Lalli appreciated that. After a while, he spoke again.  
  
"I don't know what I'm going to do out there."   
  
"You're good at so many things. Lalli, I promise there'll be things there you already know how to do, and everyone will appreciate you doing them, I promise, I really do." Emil spoke with the speed of a recitation, but his arms were still very tight around Lalli's back, another very appreciable thing when it felt like he was ready to float away. The two of them stayed there in silence a little longer, and Lalli finally noticed that his hair was definitely soaking Emil's shirt with cold water. Emil seemingly didn't mind. Maybe there would be something Lalli already knew how to do, out wherever they were going. The fact it was still a "wherever" to him was still such a scary commitment, but so was the "wherever" of following orders here, and at least the first "wherever" had this.  
  
"I made this really hard." Now that Lalli was seriously considering the idea of leaving, the terror of the idea was tinged with guilt at how he must have made Emil feel when he'd been totally refusing it. The thought that Emil had felt even a fraction of how bad he himself had felt about this was sickeningly upsetting.   
  
"I didn't realise how hard this was on you as well, I didn't think hard enough before, Lalli I'm sorry, please, please don't think it's your fault things are like this, it isn't, not even a little bit." The sentiment was wordy and far too generous, but at least there was nothing even slightly like anger. Emil was relaxing his grip a little, but continued to talk quietly into Lalli's ear. "Can I ask what changed your mind?"  
  
"I had to talk to Virpi."   
  
"Mm-hmm." Again, Emil seemed unwilling to push, just acknowledging the statement in case Lalli wanted to continue it. Lalli continued to compare what had happened with two different people this evening, and the difference was big enough to start to settle his mind. He hoped that tomorrow morning, he'd still feel the same resolve he did now. There was still so much to work out about exactly what everything had meant lately, and what things were going to happen soon. The sick grip of fear on Lalli's stomach was still very much present.   
  
Lalli thought he'd better elaborate, and took a deep breath before doing so. "She" - he found the phrase coming out of his mouth almost by itself, certainly still not something he truly believed, but something he would now be acting on anyway - "she was treating me like shit, and I don't deserve it."  
  
Emil's response to hearing that was kind of weird, Lalli thought. It didn't seem like the kind of thing that should make you hug someone very tightly, or cry, especially that hard. Lalli's first reaction was to feel concerned. However, when Emil pulled away to look Lalli in the face, through the tears his smile was more genuine than it had been in months. It felt, for a short moment, like this might all turn out okay.


	8. Chapter 8

"Emil. Wake up."  
  
Emil groaned and buried his face deeper into the thin mattress separating him and the wooden floor.  
  
"You have a long walk to the boat, remember?"  
  
"I do remember. That's why I don't want to get up." He rolled onto his back, greeted by the sight of Lalli's serious face and the light of a lamp, dim but still far too near for his unfocused eyes.  
  
"Remember that Sanna left gifts in case the skippers need convincing. They're on the kitchen table."  
  
"Mm-hmm." Emil sat up and yawned. "Okay. Ugh. Thanks for the wake-up call."  
  
"I've already been out to my traps." Lalli smirked and slid a cold hand up Emil's shirt, prodding him in the waist. "See? Plenty of time outside already." Emil suppressed a yelp and squirmed, batting it away.  
  
"You'll wake everyone up."  
  
" _You'll_ wake everyone up. I don't make the squeaks." Lalli corrected him still smirking. Presumably his good mood meant they'd be eating something exciting later, or rather Lalli and all the others would be. Emil had several very long days ahead of him, beginning with a walk to the big lake to find someone willing to take him south into a part of the Saimaa area with regular transport. He had to first get into the main body of the lake, then island-hop all the way to the southwest corner before he could get on his final boat and be on his way back to Keuruu.  
  
Emil had mostly packed the night before, a small rucksack holding spare socks and enough food for the journey. He stuffed a few baked goods and another pair of socks in the top, the latter intended only in the case of someone very obstinate making him certain to miss the schedule boat to Keuruu. Usually, people around here could be trusted to help you across the water when asked, but everyone had days where there were things they would much rather be doing, so the buns were good insurance. At least on the way back, the mage Emil planned to have in tow would make people a little more obliging.  
  
Before Emil pulled his boots on, he made sure to swoop by Lalli and put an arm around his waist, planting a kiss on his temple. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Remember you can tell the kids I'll know if they bother you too much. Miri and Sini offered to keep them off you." Lalli leaned into Emil with a content little hum, then started to prod him again.  
  
"You won't be back soon if you miss the boat."  
  
When Emil headed out the door, it was still dark and the snowmelt had made the ground horribly soggy. The sun was coming soon, though, and with it would come people and their boats. Emil trudged through the dark, the nip of the mid-spring air on his cheeks exactly what he would have expected after Lalli's freezing hands. The sunrise was at his back as he walked towards the western side of the Joutenvesi farmlands, heading to the dock that would likely have people working from the early morning. Emil passed by the house of their neighbours and heard a voice from the window of their kitchen.  
  
"Emil! So this is the day you mean to travel?" Teppo, who kept this house with his wife Maija, was a distractingly handsome middle-aged man with a broad affableness to his manner. Emil had been coming over to take milk from him and Maija in the months since they had all arrived, this being part of what the neighbours had all agreed to supply while the new family from Keuruu repaired the buildings enough to start functioning themselves. Jaana rudely blamed Emil for everyone starting to call him "hot Teppo", and Emil correctly blamed Jaana for it, and Lalli found the way they both struggled not to call him that to his face very amusing.  
  
"It is. Is anyone going around past the Savonlinna zone today?"  
  
"Teemu will take you." Teppo's second son, very blond in exactly the same way as his many near-identical brothers, was an obliging teenager who would seize the chance to go out on the water whenever he could. He was very nice and useful, and close enough to Emil's age to remind everyone how old his father was. Emil finished making his way to the docks, hanging around there with nothing to do but kick rocks into the water for about an hour, then was finally joined by Teemu. The boat ride was cold, but uneventful. Teemu was not a huge talker, although he had a habit of pointing out places he'd caught fish, of which there were many.  
  
On the way across Saimaa, Emil ended up not having to make much use of his stash of gifts, so ate most of them as he was stood on the dock waiting for the schedule boat, the same one he'd taken the last time he came from Saimaa to Keuruu. He had left enough time that he arrived the night before rather than the morning it was meant to go, but there was some shelter there, and he slept under his coat. The person taking a record of what association Emil was from didn't know exactly where he meant, but told him a detailed description would probably be good enough for the log. Once on the boat, Emil just tried to sleep.  
  
Arrival in Keuruu happened without fanfare. Onni was there waiting, and greeted Emil with as little ceremony as if they'd just run into each other in the street. There was still a little light this time, making Emil wonder if he could get around to seeing a few people before they left together in the morning.  
  
"Yes, Antti was asking after you." Onni responded to Emil's queries by getting straight to the point. "He might well still be working. Things have been taking a little longer for him lately." Onni declined to come with Emil, saying that he'd already had his farewell talk with everyone he needed to.  
  
Emil felt quite bad on hearing that Antti was still a little worse for wear. One of his regrets about leaving Keuruu was abandoning the person who'd put the most time into training him, just when his old leg injury was starting to play up a little more than it had previously. Antti had insisted at the time that being taught didn't imply an obligation, that the flare-ups had happened before and always faded. It hadn't outweighed all the reasons to go, but still, Emil really hoped he'd be getting some reassurance now.  
  
Antti was indeed still around when Emil turned up, sitting down to work. When Emil expressed his concern, he waved it off. "It's looking up. Took a while this time, but I think the summer will be alright. Your new farm, though. Tell me everything."  
  
Antti listened with interest as Emil described the intense work that had gone into repairing the dilapidated building they'd all moved into, securing the barn and improving its decaying insulation enough that next winter livestock could stay. Emil also talked about the cabin he was planning on building, once that essential work was done. They had all started out sleeping in the main room where the fire was, everyone slowly moving into a more private space as the rooms in the house became livable, but the house wasn't quite big enough for everyone. Emil drew a little plan out.  
  
"So Laura and Sanna are going to build their extra cabin pretty close too, not on the same side though, mine and Lalli's is going to be closer to the trees." Emil swirled his pencil around, crudely depicting how close the forest came at times to where they were living. "Mostly so there's something between where the kids live and the wilder edge, with people who'll notice things coming, but it'll suit him just by being what it is, too." Emil realised how deep into describing everything he'd gotten when he started illustrating where the already-standing sauna was, too.  
  
"Glad to hear Lalli is getting on with things. I never knew what exactly to do for that one." Antti shared that last thought with a rueful expression.  
  
"I really hope he ends up liking it." Emil had thought a lot about how to make life easier for Lalli once their resources expanded a bit. "I'm going to build cupboards in there that are a bit off the floor so he can sleep under them when he wants."  
  
Antti just looked a little quizzical at that. Emil realised he needed to actually explain that one. "Um, well, he has a habit of sleeping underneath things, so... I mean, I'm going to build a normal bed as well, but it's just something he feels the need to do pretty often, so I guess he should get to keep doing it when he wants." Now that he described it to an outside observer, it sounded like maybe the sort of thing people would think was weird. Emil hoped that insight into his and Lalli's life wasn't too much.  
  
Rather unexpectedly, Antti looked very pleased to hear it. "Good. Keep that up."  
  
"Eh?" Emil was a little confused.  
  
"It's good for you to give each other space. You don't have to do things together unless you want to and it makes sense to." Antti gave this advice in much the same tone he'd use to tell someone to mind their head. Emil had never heard him voice an opinion on such a topic before. Usually, if Antti was advising about something, it was because he had done it before and was sure he was decently good at it.  
  
Realising that this statement was likely more of the same made Emil feel a slight sense of relief, as a problem that had been niggling at his mind found permission to resolve itself. It wasn't that he had a huge issue with the fact that Lalli had shown no interest in interacting with Viivi or Tuuri, but he had felt some sense that he must be doing something wrong by not involving him. Perhaps not, though. This was a nice thing to learn he might have been doing right by accident.  
  
Before Emil left, he got some assurance from Antti that it was alright for him to write with updates. Antti seemed happy about the idea. "Please, do write. I will take a little while to respond at times, but rest assured, I will read all of them and send my own when I have time."  
  
Onni's living space was much less full than when Emil had last seen it. He'd given away a lot of his things, packing everything down into just what he and Emil could carry, and was heading to bed by the time Emil caught up with him and knocked on the door.  
  
"I'm sorry I have no real place for you to sleep." Onni retreated back to the nook his small bed was in, moving away the last of the small items he'd been wrapping up there.  
  
"You know I've slept in worse places. Some of these bags look pretty soft."  
  
"Very true."  
  
"You're really sorted out for this, aren't you?" Emil was looking around and found the walls totally bare, the table long cleared. "You know, I still wasn't sure you'd really leave, when I left to come fetch you. I'd have come to show you the way anyway, but I did wonder." Even though Onni had proven willing to leave Keuruu for family twice now, this seemed slightly different to the last two desperate trips.  
  
Onni just huffed. "I told you. I belong to the forest." With his head now approaching his pillow, that seemed to be the end of it.  
  
Despite how much Onni had given away, Emil's help was definitely required to carry everything down to the docks in the morning. He had never appreciated before quite how many different things Onni had filled up his life with, crafts and skills of all kinds which each merited their own little set of tools or references. The last item they picked up was Onni's big cloak. Despite how mild everything felt after the winter, he draped it over himself rather than carrying it, his hands very full.  
  
As they moved through the down and started to approach the dock, Emil ran into the one person he had really not been hoping to see. Virpi's face made him recall very clearly the last couple of weeks they had all spent in Keuruu, and how incredibly badly he'd wanted to go give her a piece of his mind before they left. Miri had asked Emil, as he finished his relating of Lalli's story and made to go down to Virpi's office, whether or not Lalli had specifically asked him to do that. The answer had been no. The abruptness with which Miri had told him he was staying put had taken him by surprise.  
  
The conversation they'd all had about that incident had been unlike any other Emil had ever been privy to. The odd distance to Miri's behaviour had snapped all the way over to the other side, springing like a green twig into close, intense directness. Did Lalli want to avoid ever seeing Virpi again? Miri had even offered to start concocting any amount of lies to make sure there was no risk of Virpi being aggravated any further or trying to get closer to him. Everyone else was following her lead without much questioning. The huge difference between their priorities in this moment had made Emil pause, and he had been glad he did.  
  
Lalli had turned out to want to keep going to work as normal until they left, and yes, to make sure Virpi had as few reasons as possible to speak to him. In the face of Lalli's continued desire for everything to stay as normal as possible, Emil had felt like a real short-sighted jerk for the first time in quite a while. When he put it more charitably to himself later, he still berated himself for the clumsiness of his urge, but vowed to channel that overprotectiveness into what would work. Still though, it felt horribly unsatisfying knowing that nobody would ever make Virpi realise how much anger and upset she'd caused. To nearly everyone in Keuruu, she was the same perfectly decent person she had always been, and the unfairness of it made Emil feel like his own guts were a seething pot of some vileness he couldn't name.  
  
Now she was talking. Emil stamped down the urge to do literally anything other than what he did, which was smile politely as she greeted him. "Virpi! Hi! It's been a while." While she couldn't take anything out on Lalli anymore, getting Onni on the boat was the priority, and nothing he did now would help anything.  
  
"A very stressful while, since so many skalds left at once. I do wonder how Jaana isn't going mad, with nothing out there to keep that bright mind of hers occupied." Virpi really had not made much of an effort to hide the fact she'd felt a bit betrayed by specifically Jaana leaving, having seemingly liked her quite a lot.  
  
"She's been teaching Icelandic to the neighbours' sons. There's stuff." In the time before they had left, Emil had thought about the way Jaana used to talk about running this place someday, and had wondered a little about the same thing. It had turned out that there was plenty to organise even if you weren't in a place other people considered important, which was a relief to all. Virpi's face said she still thought it was a bit of a waste, and she turned to address Onni. When she did, her voice turned from the politeness of a regrettable but reasonable interaction, veering into full-on passive-aggressiveness.  
  
"You know, Onni, I am a bit surprised by this. I just expected you to have a little more sense of responsibility than your cousin." At Virpi's barbed comment, Onni froze, taking a deep breath. Emil got the very distinct sense that he was counting under his breath, trying to resist the urge to retaliate. Onni did not succeed, slowly turning to face Virpi and placing down the box he was carrying.  
  
"You have no right." Emil started at the freezing cold in Onni's voice.  
  
"Well, there's no need to be rude." Virpi crossed her arms and stood her ground, convinced of her right to make the point.  
  
Onni dipped his face and glared at her from under the brim of his hood. From where Emil was stood, it made an imposing silhouette. When Onni replied, it had a strange tone.  
  
"Do not speak to me of duty, I've no problem with my memory." The phrasing was so close to how Onni might usually speak, Emil almost thought that was why something felt familiar, but as he felt a fresh wind slightly pick up his hair he started to recognise the pattern. Onni's voice became slightly more sing-song as he continued.  
  
"You sent out the forests' own son, laying your doom hard on his head, leaving from his fathers' lakeland, tracking voices of the long dead."  
  
Virpi grimaced and took a step back, Onni following her with a single step forward of his own. He was now pacing his words in a way that was unmistakably the verse of mages.  
  
"Heavy on your head now that doom,  
be forever with death's voices,  
like the radio long enduring,  
any felled by your own choices."  
  
Emil shivered as he felt something brush against him, or through him. It was not unlike the way the wing of a bird might feel, if those could pass between your ribs with no hint of sound or damage. Everything suddenly felt much, much frostier.  
  
Onni kept his gaze on Virpi for a few seconds, then spoke out of verse, his voice like the eerie crack of trees in the very depths of winter. "Never ask anything of my family again." He picked his box up again and spun on his heel, his cloak swirling out behind him as he turned. Virpi was left standing there, face drained of all colour. Emil followed Onni, carrying the bag he'd originally picked up with an expression of shock.  
  
They had a little time to wait on the dock. "Um, Onni?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Did you actually curse her?" Emil was sure they weren't allowed to do that, somehow. Maybe they were, and all the mages he knew were just very good at holding themselves above petty urges.  
  
"No."  
  
"It felt like magic was happening."  
  
"She's no more cursed than she was before. I don't have the power to bring souls back from Tuonela to speak to her, or to anyone else." Onni sounded bitter at that. "She might well half believe anything she hears is some poor former subordinate from now on, though. When she thinks about it logically she'll know better, but the irrational mind is a powerful destroyer of sleep." His expression made the normal definition of dark humour look positively sunny.  
  
"Oh." There really wasn't much Emil could say to that. As he wondered to himself what exactly had been going on in Onni's head all these months to prompt it, he saw the gangplank come down and heard the call to start loading their things onto the boat. Whatever satisfaction anyone was going to get had been obtained, now. All they could do was move on.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that concludes what was quite a long arc! I have most of the next fic planned out, and that will be the final one in this series, although it's not the last one I have set in this timeline/spinoff/'verse/what have you. A couple of people have called it an AU and would hesitate to call it that because aside from a couple of details it's all technically compliant with canon still. This will become relevant at some point because I am wondering what I'll do when this 'verse starts to really diverge from canon, as seems likely in the coming chapter. 
> 
> I think that enough people seem to enjoy it that even with fairly major jossing, I would want to continue. (If Lalli dies in the upcoming chapter, though, I will be incredibly sad and probably take a little while off writing SSSS.) I think a lot of people can already guess what pairing the next fic is going to be about, honestly in many ways it will be quite predictable but I hope people will enjoy the journey anyway. I'm intending on it being similar to "Kasvatus" in that I'm going to go back to being a bit more choppy with the timeline continuity and freeform with the chapter lengths, and also similar in there being more time spent on describing the landscape it takes place in, but also different in that the two focus characters will be older with different priorities and issues. Anyway, more sheep, more Suomi, more shenanigans.
> 
> I am going to try my best to take a break before writing more, because it's been a lot of work lately! That said, the setting is already fleshed out enough that I know Emil's new neighbours' ridiculous sons are called Timo, Teemu, Tarvo, Tatu, Tarmo, Tauno and Taito, and the scenes are planned enough that I know more or less exactly how many times a certain wandering Icelander messes up trying his best to even distinguish them all. (Don't worry, I won't expect that anyone else can keep track either, I already admire everyone's patience with the amount of OCs I throw in.) Maybe I can just try to update more slowly.
> 
> A few of you will probably be pleased to know that the first plot on the list of planned spinoffs is going to feature both Tine and Mikkel. It's going to be a cheesy "whodunnit" featuring murder most foul and a shady scheme, probably set in Reykjavik, in which Mikkel attempts to be very drudgery-and-disillusionment Danish crime procedural and is dragged along by Tine doing her best plucky Nancy Drew impression.


End file.
